Biography

Margriet van Heesch (Combined MA Comparative Literature and Philosophy: UvA)  is currently teaching on topics such as Romantic Love, Sex, Gender and Sexuality for the Graduate School of Social Sciences and the departments of Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science  and Humanities

• Zet geslachtsvariaties ook in het biologieboek: Heesch en Abma in NRC 27 maart 2015

• Zo'n contract vooraf werkt niet bijdate rape, NRC Margriet van Heesch 13 oktober 2014

Dissertation: Public Defense May 29 at 11.00 (Aula of the University of Amsterdam)

 

They Didn't Know Whether I Was a Boy or a Girl:  Knowledge, Choice and Variations of Sex Development. Living With, and the (Un)Knowing of Intersex Conditions in the Netherlands

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Tineke Abma (VU), Prof. Dr. Guy Widdershoven (VU) and Prof. Dr. Hugo Heymans (UvA).

 

To gain insight onto the long term effects of surgical and hormonal interventions in chidhood, I listened to the life stories of more than 40 Dutch people who reached adulthood while living with an intersex condition in The Netherlands. With this research I aim to situate the diversity of lived experiences with medical interventions for intersex in a gender critical and epistemological perspective. How do  people with intersex conditions evaluate their lives and incorporate the normative choices, made in the daily medical practices and discourse? Their stories raise hope and provide alternatives for past and current medical interventions. Subsequently their stories show long-term insights that are conceivably relocated from the medical discourse towards a socio-cultural, epistemological and ethical discourse:

There is nothing we can gain from secrets.

Conference Papers and Lectures

•  "Geslachtsvariaties, chirurgie, ethiek en zelfbeschikking" Debat: Het Monster van Frankenstein ben jij De Balie Amsterdam, oktober 2012
• Youtube link: http://youtu.be/qZrJYnA2Soo
  

• video registration"Het monster van Frankenstein ben jij!DeBalie debatDe Balie in Amsterdam (in Dutch)

Older Lectures

• _{"Queering the Semiotics of Sex Chromosomes", What's Queer here? ASCA Soirees (2009)}
  
• _{"Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Intersexuality" (with Miriam van der Have), Amnesty International's Movies that Matter (2008)}
  
• _{"Sex, Cigarettes and Rock & Roll: regulatie geslacht en seksualiteit", Drift, Philosophy Festival Amsterdam, (2008)}
  
• _{"Transsexualityhas never been Modern", Drift, Philosophy Festival Amsterdam, (2007)}
• _{"Situated Medical Ethics and Intersexuality", SLSA/ASCA Conference, Close Encounters, Amsterdam (2006)}
• _{"Ways of Not Knowing You have XY Chromosomes", ASCA Conference, Ways of Knowing, Amsterdam (2006)}
• _{"Ways of Knowing Sex and/from Gender" ASCA Seminar, Ways of Knowing, Amsterdam (2006)}
• _{"Intertwining Ethics and Aesthetics," ASCA Conference, Commitment in the Humanities, Amsterdam (2005)}
• _{"Giving Account of Embodied Violence" ASCA Seminar, Commitment in the Humanities, Amsterdam (2004)}
• _{"I AmThe One Who HasTo Manage To Grow Old With It!" Internat. Oral History Conference, Rome (2004)}
• _{"Let's Talk About Sex, Baby", Sexuality, Society and the Self Conference, Amsterdam (2004)}
• _{"Fixing Sex, Gender, and Sexuality" European Social Science History Conference, Berlin (2004)}
• _{"Retrospective Ethical Dilemmas in Life Narratives" Mosse Foundation Lecture Series, Amsterdam (2004)}

Zet geslachtsvariaties ook in het biologieboek NRC Handelsblad 27 maart 2015

Een frauduleus medisch protocol heeft mensen met een dubbel geslachtskenmerk jarenlang benadeeld, stellen Tineke Abma (hoogleraar participatie & diversiteit) en Margriet van Heesch (cultuurwetenschapper) vast. 

"In de brugklas ontdekte Marianne links en rechts een bobbeltje in haar liezen. In het ziekenhuis stelde een arts vast dat het niet om kanker ging. Wat het wel was, dat vertelden ze haar niet."

Lees verder: 

• Zet geslachtsvariaties ook in het biologieboek

 Jongetje of meisje, we bepaalt dat nu eigenlijk?

Vinger aan de Pols / Hoe is het nu? zond op 13 januari 2015 een documentaire uit over het Palestijnse jongetje Hilmi dat na een operatie in Nederland het meisje Heleentje werd en nu, als volwassene, David is. Gastauteurs Tineke Abma en Margriet van Heesch hebben naar de uitzending gekeken.

"Er was geen reflectie op het feit dat ook huidige technieken op langere termijn gevolgen kunnen hebben die we niet kunnen overzien. En als technieken nu beter zijn dan toen, is dat dan juist geen reden om te wachten met de chirurgische ingrepen zoals aanleg van een vagina of penis? Tegen de tijd dat een kind seksueel actief wordt, is de techniek immers nog verder verbeterd, en kan het kind zelf meebeslissen."

 

• Jongetje of Meisje, wie bepaalt dat eigenlijk?

Zo'n contract vooraf werkt echt niet tegen date rape NRC 13 oktober 2014

Date rape komt ook in Nederland voor. In Californië is er laatst een wet tegen ingevoerd. Yes means yes. Maar helpt zo’n contract? Praten en luisteren is effectiever, meent UvA-docent Margriet van Heesch.

"Meer inzicht in ambivalent seksisme, heteronormativiteit en de mythes van mannelijke seksdrang en vrouwelijke inborst te liegen (kijk maar hoe Eva Adam bedroog) zou misschien wel een wapen tegen date rape kunnen zijn."

• Zo'n contract vooraf werkt niet bij date rape

International Refereed Publication

"Do I have XY chromosomes?"in: Critical Intersex (ed. Morgan Holmes) Burlington VT: Ashgate Press, 2009

Sociologist Prof. Raewyn Connell (University of Sydney) in his 2011  review:

"Margriet van Heesch’s chapter ‘‘Do I Have XY Chromosomes?’’ explores intersex people’s negotiations with doctors in the Netherlands. It is based on specific life stories and documentary history, and is beautifully clear and compassionate. Rather than sweeping generalizations about culture, van Heesch locates medical practices, including the withholding of knowledge from patients, precisely in the changing context of biomedical knowledge and professional beliefs."In: Contemporary Sociology 40, 2 2011 (p. 194-5)

• Link to the book Critical Intersex and it's contents

CRITICAL INTERSEX (ed. Morgan Holmes) 2009 

Presenting the latest theoretical and empirical research from an international group of experts, this is a truly interdisciplinary volume containing critical approaches from both the humanities and social sciences. With its contributions to sociology, anthropology, medicine, law, history, cultural studies, psychology and psychoanalysis, Critical Intersex will appeal to scholars and clinical practitioners alike. About the Editor: Morgan Holmes is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada.

Theorizing Gender

Graduate School for  Social Sciences , University of Amsterdam
This MA course is designed to provide basic insights into the development of gender theories until the present day. Ideas about femininity and masculinity and poststructuralist theoretical notions of sex, gender and sexuality will be analyzed in the context of Western cultures as well as in transnational, postcolonial and diasporic context. Students will acquire the capacity to relate recent theoretical debates about questions such as ethnic and class differences, normative ideas about sexuality, human agency and the structure of power/knowledge relations to the dynamics of social gender relations. Students will also achieve a new understanding of contemporary discussions concerning sex, gender and it's intersections with sexuality, class, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, ableness etc.
Semester 2 2011, Semester 2 2012, Semester 2 2013

Dance Me To The En of Love: An Epistemology of Romance

Department of Humanities (Literature and Languages) University of Amsterdam
The stories we tell each other in literature, in film, music lyrics, newspaper articles, jokes, the law, medical and scientific narratives show us how love is negotiated through ideologies (or cultural scripts) on sex, gender and sexuality.  Cultural scripts are dominant narratives that circulate, are being told and retold that give some blueprint on how romantic love should be experienced.  By shaping possible ways in which love can be experienced, the impossible is being defined.
In this course we will look closely at love narratives cross-culturally and from all possible genres in literature, film, theatre, poetry, art and even music lyrics. Our task will be to evaluate how critical theories deconstruct dominant and or subversive structures of how to love.  To reach more understanding, we will look at the structuring elements of love narratives in terms of the suggested theories, as well as create our own.We shall read novels, poetry, look at films and analyze the ideologies of how love is narrated along or against the lines of dominant assumptions on sex,gender and sexuality as well as intersections with ethnicity,"race",religion, age, class, health and citizenship.
Semester 1-2008, Semester 1-2009-2010, Semester 1-2011-2012 Semester 2-2012, Semester 1 & 2 2013 also in 2014.

Experiencing Differences

In cooperation with Marie Louise Janssen

This course consists of a series of lectures on ethnic minorities, women, gays &lesbians in a Dutch context. The lecturers will discuss the following issues: The construction/social formation of identities and communities; cultural and political mobilization; social relations between majorities and minorities; discrimination; production and denial of differences; strategies on integration, assimilation, and opposition. Lecturers will focuson the citypolitics of Amsterdamand discuss the conceptof cultural 'diversity' in a Dutch context. The contemporary political and social turmoil surrounding questions of ethnicity,gender and sexuality are an integral part of the course. Students are requested to visit the spaces of the discussed groups and report on their experiences of difference in these places.
Semester 2-2012/13

Introduction to Sexual Studies

Gruaduate School for Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam
In cooperation with Gert Hekma
The BA course offers an overview of sexual sciences including moral theology, biology, history, sociology, gender studies and cultural analysis, as well as perspectives on hetero- and homosexuality, auto-eroticism and so-called paraphilia such as sadomasochism, pedophiliaand transsexuality. The focus of thecourse will be on the histories of Europeansexual cultures and sciences.
Semester 2- 2008 , Semester 2- 2009, Semester 2-2010

Social Theories of Sexuality

Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Amsterdam        In cooperation with Gert Hekma
This BA course aims at an understanding of modern Western sexuality as the historical outcomeof competing discourses on culture, gender and pleasure (versus the notion of sex as a natural instinct). The focus is on cultural perspectives on sex. The classic texts of Plato, Marquis de Sade, Sigmund Freud and Michel Foucault will be read and discussed in class. Foucault's The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1 (1976) is the main example of the historical approach that will serve as a starting point for further readings on sexual theories and practices,with a focus of the development of Western sexual cultures since the sexual revolution of the 1960's.
Semester 2 -2010

Social and Cultural Studies of Sexuality

Gruaduate School for Social Sciences, University of Amsterdam
With Gert Hekma and Rachel Spronk
This interdisciplinary MA course offers an introduction to sexuality studies from a social science perspective. The various disciplines of the social sciences will be discussed, partly based on important monographs ( history, sociology, anthropology, political sciences). Wewillfurther engage in contemporary debates about sexuality, including queer theory, based ona range of sources. Weroughly start fromthe scholarlyturn that has occurred in the late 1970s in the study of sexuality, with the theory generally known as 'social construction of sexuality'. Whereas previously sexuality used to be studied mainly within the biomedical paradigm of health and disease, the social sciences surveyed sexual behaviour or studied marginal social groups (prostitutes, homosexuals). The social construction of sexuality, instead, provides a methodology to analyze the dynamics between  culture and sexual performance in order to understandwhat people do and don't do andwhyso. Themes will besexual politics, gender,  age, class, religion, pleasure and desire, mainly from a cross-cultural perspective.
Semester 1 2009-2010

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